Eastern Michigan University DigitalCommons@EMU Master's Theses, and Doctoral Dissertations, and Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations Graduate Capstone Projects 7-1-2015 Only a body “who nobody owns:” Adolescent identity in Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book Aleesa Marie Millet Follow this and additional works at: http://commons.emich.edu/theses Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Millet, Aleesa Marie, "Only a body “who nobody owns:” Adolescent identity in Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book" (2015). Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations. 704. http://commons.emich.edu/theses/704 This Open Access Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Master's Theses, and Doctoral Dissertations, and Graduate Capstone Projects at DigitalCommons@EMU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@EMU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Only a Body “Who nobody owns:” Adolescent Identity in Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book by Aleesa Marie Millet Thesis Submitted to the Department of English Language and Literature Eastern Michigan University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in Children’s Literature Thesis Committee: Ramona Caponegro, Ph.D., Chair Annette Wannamaker, Ph.D. July 1, 2015 Ypsilanti, Michigan Acknowledgements This project would never have been possible without the support of my fantastic thesis committee. I first want to thank my wonderful advisor, Dr. Ramona Caponegro, for always being available to hear my ideas, to reassure me when I had doubts, and to help me work through my many revisions. I also want to thank you for your unwavering patience and, most importantly, reminding me to breathe. I could not have made it to this point without your invaluable guidance. I also want to thank Dr. Annette Wannamaker, my second reader, for teaching me that graduate school is about challenging yourself, advice that motivated me throughout this project. From the beginning of my master’s career you have urged me to push the boundaries of what I know and how I think. In addition, I would like to thank Dr. Ian Wojcik-Andrews for introducing me to The Graveyard Book in his Adolescent Literature course, and for allowing me to test out some of my ideas in the undergraduate Introduction to Children’s Literature lecture hall. Finally, I would like to thank my family for all the love and support sent from miles away. Mom and Dad, thank you for always encouraging me to pursue my dreams, even when that meant living ten hours away and sporadic (but much needed) video chats. Last, but certainly not least, I want to thank my fiancé, Christopher. From early discussions to all-night writing sessions, thank you for being my rock through all the craziness. I am so lucky to have you as a partner, editor, shoulder to cry on, and a distraction when I desperately need one (and when I don’t). Most of all, thank you for assuring me that I could do this. ii Abstract Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book presents a child, Nobody (Bod) Owens, who grows up in a graveyard with ghosts and a vampire as primary guardians. While Bod is not technically an adolescent for the entire novel, he is constantly struggling with adolescent themes—primarily being in a liminal state—and the graveyard provides a heterotopian space for Bod to escape “normal” society and to develop an “othered” identity. Gaiman’s strategic use of monsters reflects adolescence as he presents the repressive human organization, the “Jacks of All Trades,” trying to control society, while Bod becomes a queer monster/human hybrid representing the resistant individual. It is as Bod transitions between the worlds of the living and the dead that he becomes aware of how he does not fully belong to either, and he must come to terms with his own liminal otherness. Gaiman displays how an adolescent can develop and grow to become anyone he wants, even Nobody. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ...……………………………………………………………………….. ii Abstract …………………………………………………………………………………….. iii Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………. 1 Chapter I—The Graveyard: In Which Somebody becomes Nobody………………………. 11 Chapter II—Nobody is a Monster …………………………………………………………. 34 Chapter III—The Jacks of All Trades: Nobody Gets Around the System ………………… 53 Chapter IV—When Nobody Becomes Somebody ………………………………………… 72 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………………. 92 Works Cited ………………………………………………………………………………... 97 iv Introduction The terms “adolescent literature” and “young adult novels” are used to classify books that, similar to their characters, just seem to not belong anywhere else. The category of adolescent literature is increasingly difficult to define. Are adolescents the target audience of such books? Maybe, but they are definitely not the only ones reading them. Perhaps the label is based off of the subject matter. The protagonists of these books are usually of an adolescent age; therefore, we might use that criterion to label the book. While there are certainly loose definitions of this literary category, one thing is certain: the adolescent characters depicted within these books are rarely, if ever, “normal.” The Oxford English Dictionary defines “normal” in many ways. A significant definition to this thesis is: “Constituting or conforming to a type or standard; regular, usual, typical; ordinary, conventional.” It is a given that such a term changes from place to place, culture to culture, being constructed as whatever is the norm within each respective society. The fact is that, while this term might be thrown around excessively, there is no such thing as normal. Works of adolescent literature question what is normal because they often depict and comment on societal norms and push to break through these constructed boundaries. Many scholars have attempted to define the genre of adolescent literature. Roberta Seelinger Trites, a well-known scholar within the field, discusses the definition of the genre in Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature. She notes that it was not until the twentieth century that G. Stanley Hall coined the term “adolescence” to recognize as a state in personal development, and so it was around this time that books were first specifically written and marketed for adolescents. Trites explains, “The American Library Association classifies adolescent literature into three categories: ‘Books Written 1 Specifically for Adolescents,’ ‘Books Written for General Trade Market Which Have Adolescent Heroes and Heroines,’ and ‘General Books of Interest to Young Adults’” (7). From these classifications it seems that almost all books can be considered adolescent literature. Yet, if everything can be classified as such, can it be possible to create a category of books titled “adolescent literature?” A prominent aspect within works of adolescent literature is identity, specifically the identity development of the protagonist within a novel. Adolescence is traditionally thought to be the time when one “finds oneself,” or discovers who he or she really is. Meanwhile a prominent feature of adolescence is that one is in between childhood and adulthood – liminally straddling the two categories while belonging to neither. In “The Ethics and Practice of Lemony Snicket: Adolescence and Generation X,” Laurie Langbauer writes, “An identity that is sometimes child, sometimes adult, but also both or neither is…‘young adult’ or … ‘adolescent’” (504). In other words, adolescence is a liminal state where we place people that do not fully belong to the age categories of child or adult, just like “their” books. Liminality is defined as being on a boundary or embodying a transitional state—such a state is one every adolescent experiences. Langbauer continues to say that marketing to both children and adults “confirms adolescence as a representational frontier, one that encompasses the otherwise irreconcilable categories of child and adult” (505). When we think of a child, we automatically think that he or she is not an adult, and vice-versa. Adolescence seems to bridge that gap, connecting two very different states. This connection is conveyed clearly and significantly through works of adolescent literature, a category which is intended for a specific audience but actually reaches beyond it. 2 A common trope within these stories that resist categorization is to strive for this unachievable normalcy. In the adolescent struggle for identity, one is constantly searching for somewhere to belong, desiring to appear “normal” to his peers, parents, etc. As Angela Oswalt describes in “Erik Erikson and Self-Identity,” this stage is what Erikson theorizes as the first life “crisis” of adolescence, the crisis of identity: when an adolescent struggles to find a balance between developing a unique, individual identity while still “fitting in” or being accepted by peers. In Neil Gaiman’s novel The Graveyard Book, such a crisis becomes even more difficult when a human orphan is adopted by ghosts, lives in a graveyard, has an undead guardian, and a werewolf for a nanny. The liminal protagonist of this novel is appropriately named Nobody (Bod) Owens. What makes this story unique is that Bod never struggles with the desire to be “normal.” He has other struggles, which I will elaborate on throughout this thesis, but trying to fit into some societal construction of normalcy is never one of them. Bod grows up in a graveyard surrounded by ghosts, is constantly referred to as the “live one” by his cohabitants, and appears to accept this life of otherness as normal. He is aware of his differences from everyone that he interacts with (living, dead, or otherwise), but never seems to want to change. Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book is also a great example of how the genre of adolescent literature is changing, and becoming not just for adolescents. It is within adolescent literature that we find certain authors that breach as many boundaries as their subjects and characters.